Updated A number of Apple fanbois have been shut out of their iTunes store and iCloud accounts since last night as their login details fail to work as expected.

Attempts to access the services are thwarted with either a 'fatal internal error occurred' message being shown or the software simply saying that the password hasn't been recognised.

One Reg reader said that Apple's support lines were "congested", but when they eventually got through, the support person said that Apple ID computers were down.

Apple had not answered a request for comment at the time of publication.

The twitosphere is alive with complaints about the problem (#appleid) and seem to indicate that the issue is happening all over the world - judging by the number of tweets appearing in various different languages.

So far, Apple itself has made no public statements about the problem, leaving most Apple-lovers to thank social networking sites for giving them the news that they're not alone in having issues. The outage comes as Apple rolls out its iTunes Match service to the UK and other countries.

Update

Apple is now reporting that some problems were experienced by iCloud users, but it's all sorted now, on what appears to be a new system status page. ®